Separate but equal?

FOR DADS
Don’t do it for show. “The other night my wife had a friend over, and I went a little crazy making them dinner. I made them three different entrées, just so I could seem like the fabulous husband who cooks,” admits Ted Haegele, a dad of two in Brooklyn’s South Slope. To be fair, Haegele does cook most of the family dinners, but on that night, he went overboard to make the point to the friend that he is indeed an involved father and husband.

Get detail-oriented. It’s usually not the grand gestures (bringing home flowers, taking your child to a ball game or cooking three entrées) that help lighten the parenting load for your partner. It’s the details—knowing your baby’s diaper size and your preschooler’s teachers’ names; remembering to schedule doctor appointments and to bring your child’s lovey on outings—that tend to signal true involvement, Richards believes. These are the “gaps that divide primary and nonprimary parents,” she writes.